Amateur filmmakers recreate The Avengers trailer, including their version of Capital America's uniform. YouTube

November 23, 2012

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In 2006, Michel Gondry's film Be Kind Rewind introduced the idea of "sweding," which SwededMovies.org defines as "the summarized recreation of popular pop-culture films using limited budgets and a camcorder." (In Gondry's movie, two characters remake all the movies in a video rental joint after the originals get accidentally erased, and tell the customers that the new versions are from Sweden.) In the years since, budding filmmakers and movie fans have taken up Gondry's challenge, recreating popular movie scenes and trailers with an ingenious blend of amateur acting, a capella music, and action scenes using cardboard and toys. The latest example? A shot-for-shot reimagining of the Iron Man 3trailer, complete with corrugated Iron Man armor and a devastating attack on a cardboard box by a toy helicopter. Here, the fan remake of the Iron Man 3trailer, and five other brilliant sweded trailers:

1. Iron Man 3The fan-made Iron Man 3 trailer is enjoyable enough on its own merits, but this video, which places the reshoot alongside the original Iron Man 3 trailer, shows the great pains the filmmakers took to turn in an accurate shot-for-shot remake.

2. The Hobbit: An Unexpected JourneyThe Hobbit doesn't hit theaters for another few weeks, but this group of eager fans couldn't resist reshooting the trailer and adding a few extra dwarves of their own — including, inevitably, Dopey, Sneezy, and Doc.

3. The AvengersThe same team that turned in the Iron Man 3 reshoot cut their teeth on the trailer for this summer's The Avengers, though they deviated from the script to get in a few playful jabs at the superhero film. After Robert Downey Jr. (and his low-budget doppelganger) utters the immortal line, "If we can't protect the Earth, you can be damn sure we'll avenge it," Thor chuckles, "He worked in the title."

4. InceptionRecreating the mind-bending effects of Inception on a micro-budget is a tall order, but these savvy amateurs found a way to pull it off. Some clever camera work brings to life a passable recreation of Inception's hallway fight, but the sharpest, funniest moment comes in the sweded trailer's substitution for the massive firearm used at the end of the original clip.

5. AvatarIt may not be in 3D, but this amateur take on Avatar packs the film's most memorable qualities — including its bow-toting, blue-skinned alien creatures — into a surprisingly spot-on reshoot.

6. The Dark Knight RisesIt isn't an exact shot-for-shot recreation of the film's trailer, but this two-and-a-half minute video doubles as a highlight reel of The Dark Knight's most iconic scenes — including a fairly impressive spin on the Bat-Cycle.